


split it across the wine-dark sea

by BeepGrandCherokeeper



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Alternate Universe - Pygmalion and Galatea (Hellenistic Religion & Lore) Fusion, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Inspired by Twitter, M/M, Mythology References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 19:30:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18169130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeepGrandCherokeeper/pseuds/BeepGrandCherokeeper
Summary: The statue’s gaze darts down Hank’s mouth, taking in the way the corner of his lips turn. “What’s your name?” it asks, leaning forward.“Hank,” he says. “Who are you?”The statue lifts a hand and brushes some stray locks of hair out of its eye. They catch the light again, russet and gold, and looking... real. Touchable, and soft. It takes a step down from the plinth, onto the cold stone floor.“My name is Connor,” it says. “She said you needed me.”(A Pygmalion AU)





	split it across the wine-dark sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fishydwarrows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishydwarrows/gifts).



> Originally a twitter thread! Please see the relevant links at the end~

Hank gives up being a sculptor after his son is born, content to live off the fruits of his earlier labors.

When his son dies in a sudden, violent accident, he picks up his chisel again only to destroy a block of marble. It’s all he knows how to do, now: destroy.

It takes a year for him to start running out of money with the way he spends it on drink, and he’s faced with the decision to begin working again or waste away slowly, starving to death in the streets. The latter option scares him. He seeks out old patrons and commissioners. No one believes he can hold a candle to his former glory, least of all Hank, but he has deadlines and people to please, so he holds his tools in shaky hands and tries to relearn how to make beautiful things.

His first few projects turn out wrong. They do get better. Not by much.

Finally, when his first deadline is just a week away, he puts down the bottle and works for an inhuman stretch of time, making a small household idol that actually looks like his old work. It isn’t exact; Hank sees imperfections and ways he can improve. Thankfully, customers don’t notice.

He withdraws from society, except to meet with clients and purchase his necessities, and spends all his free hours either drinking or trying to improve his sculptures. He can’t quite capture expressions the way he once did, or musculature, but he won’t use models. It’s too much, to have someone with him when he’s in the grips of a creative impulse. He hates the feeling of being watched, being pitied, and anyone who saw the state of his studio - the state of himself - would pity or hate him.

He sets aside a separate block, for practice. At first he doesn’t know what it will be. He doesn’t pray to muses, or burn sacrifices hoping that divine inspiration will strike. The gods have nothing for him. Instead, he tries to let his quivering hands take him where they will, chipping here and there without much thought. Before too long, he decides that it’s a man. He hasn’t seen another man in some time, but the statue seems to come along just the same. As he works, on and off, bits of his creation revealed to sunlight slanting through the window, Hank realizes this is something special. Unique.

The thought almost spoils his work, too much pressure on himself, but he tries to let it go and allow the man to emerge however he pleases. He is tall, taller than Hank on his plinth, slim but sturdily built, with long fingers and round nails. His hair falls in loose curls.

Hank works like he’s possessed, returning to the drink only so he can get a few hours’ sleep before he starts anew. Projects that need finishing sit abandoned until the last possible minute. He pours everything into the statue of the man, chipping away at him for nearly a year. It might have taken another man longer, but Hank... Hank was a master, once. Obsession and talent can go a long way.

When the statue is finished, Hank knows. He goes to chisel away one more thing, soften one line, and then he stops and sets his tools aside. He’s made an angel.

Hank knows he should do something with his creation. He nearly paints it several times, scribbling notes on loose pages he leaves around his workbench - black, for the hair? Blond? Are his eyes green, brown, hazel maybe? Is the cloth draped to preserve his modesty blue? But most of all, he knows he should sell it. His coffers aren’t in the dire state they were, but he still needs money. Something of this caliber would bring in a lot of coin, but... Every time he thinks of someone he could bring to his studio, to show them his masterpiece, he balks.

He still does his other work. Now, though, as Hank makes little reliefs and willowy dryads for gardens, he asks his favorite statue for his opinion. He thinks aloud, pausing as if expecting an answer, and turns to look at him when he searches for creative revelations.

One day, as he finishes painting a bust for one of his more illustrious patrons, he glances at the statue and frowns. “Sorry,” he says, daubing a rich purple onto the woman’s headdress. “I still haven’t figured you out. Too many options.” He pours a jug of water over his brush. “If you’d had a model,” Hank adds, scrubbing out the paint with his fingers, “I might have a better idea, but nothing feels right. Maybe I’m missing something.”

He leaves the bust and his paints behind and crosses the room, standing in front of his statue. It stares, unblinking.

Hank had carved the statue so that the lines of its body curved, an elegant slope from the neck down to the torso. His favorite part, the most realistic bit, is the angle of the statue’s jaw. Its head is turned, tendons in the neck stark, making a hollow between two collarbones. Hank opens his mouth to speak, but no words come to him. Without thinking, Hank reaches up and thumbs the statue’s jaw - gentle, just like he’d touch something soft and breakable. He forgot about the paint. A purple streak smears across smooth white marble.

“Ah, fuck,” he grumbles, pulling down his sleeve. With a few swipes, there’s no harm done - not to the statue, anyway. Hank feels like a fool.

Ignoring the heat in his cheeks, the way his own jaw tightens, Hank tugs off his smock and blows out the candles, leaving the studio.

He drinks a little more than usual that evening, to drown the feelings he hates himself for having - but it’s all waiting for him in the morning. How lonely is he, that a pretty face can bring him to ruin? How full of himself, if that face is something he created? He finishes another drink, goes back to sleep for a while, and leaves for the studio in the heat of midday as force of habit. Halfway down the path his feet take him somewhere else. Anywhere else. He wanders, the city empty as he meanders through alleyways and wipes at his brow. Eventually, he finds himself at the outskirts of his homeland and moving beyond even that, into dense groves of trees and between crumbling pillars. This part of the city has been abandoned for decades, left for greenery to reclaim after a series of fires. No one comes out here.

He’s blessedly alone, and he wants to keep going, but he’s panting with exercise and the sun’s rays are oppressive. On a whim, he ducks under a crumbling archway into what he thinks is a ruined temple. There’s no sign of what god this place once belonged to.

“Hopefully they won’t begrudge me some shade,” he says aloud, an unfortunate habit he’s picked up in chatting with his statue. At the thought of the cold marble, the light definition of muscle on its stomach, blank and steady eyes, his mood sours. He wishes he’d brought a drink.

Hank takes a seat before a cracked plinth. He leans against it, basking in the cool of the shadows. “Either they died long ago, and there’s no one to care,” he grumbles, still thinking about the gods, “or they hate me. Don’t know what’s worse sometimes.” He closes his eyes. “Everything I loved is gone. Pretending doesn’t get me anywhere.”

Something moves behind him, a subtle shift of fabric, the crack of...of a branch? Hank finds he can’t open his eyes.

“What cause have you to pretend,” says a woman’s voice, “when what you seek might yet exist?”

Hank tenses, ready to spring up and away, or to defend himself - it has to be a woman’s voice, but there’s something wrong about it, an eerie echo like the cracking of a fire. He’s never heard a human voice like it. He thinks he’s right in assuming it’s not human at all.

He finds he can’t move, either.

“Who are you?”

The voice hesitates, considering.

“I don’t know. It has been a long time since someone prayed to me. Longer still since anyone came to worship at my feet.”

A heavy weight seems to slip off Hank’s shoulders, like a cloak, and he’s no longer pinned in place. He stands first, unwilling to scramble away as if he is afraid - he is, of course, his hands shake harder than they ever have from drink and his heart is pounding in his chest, but he won’t show weakness before this - whatever she is.

“I’m not praying,” he says, and he turns.

The goddess - what else could she be, besides a drunken hallucination? - is still partly stone from the waist down. Her eyes are black like the abyss, their depths unfathomable. White marble shows under waves of brown skin, rippling out from where pieces of the statue are broken. She’s beautiful, as if crafted by hands more talented than Hank could ever hope to become, but she is terrible as well. Hank is moved to pity for her sorry state. He is terrified of what this means. Visions of the gods rarely turn out well for those who have them.

“Prayers are not just lists of demands,” she says, brushing iridescent coils of hair over her shoulder. They creak as they move, like living rock. “I hear cries for help no matter how they are pronounced. You’re lost. You have been lost for some time. And...you’re sad.”

Hank clenches his fist. “You took my son.”

The black pools of her eyes shift, only slightly, but Hank sees it happen. They shine with...what, sympathy? Kindness? Pity? He grimaces at the thought.

“I have no control over the fates of mortals. Your lives are unfathomable to me.”

“Then why are you here?” Hank snaps, a sudden anger boiling in the pit of his belly.

She doesn’t blink - hasn’t blinked, once. With a subtle shudder, she vanishes briefly from existence. “You woke me.”

“What good are you, if you can’t give back what was stolen from me?”

The goddess ripples again, one slow spread from the center outward, leaving behind a chipped and cracked statue before she comes back to herself in a gentle wave. The sight of it sends a chill down Hank’s spine.

“You called to me. There must be something you’re looking for.”

“I want to be left alone,” Hank snaps.

She shakes her head. “There’s more.”

“To die.” Hank chokes on that last word, just a bit. He knows she caught it.

She shakes her head again.

“Your soul cries out for what’s missing... the comfort in the presence of another. In losing yourself. Taking some of the burden off your shoulders, and sharing it.”

“So I’m lonely?” Hank asks, snorting with derision. “That your diagnosis? I could have told you that.”

“There is a city of people not far beyond the steps of my temple. People to hate, to love, to be with.” She tilts her head, at an angle and eerily similar to the statue waiting in his studio. Her piercing, nebulous gaze doesn’t leave his. “You don’t want them?”

“No.”

She doesn’t ask him why. He gets the feeling she knows already, can see deep within him down to the rejection, the aching, painful vulnerability, how he drinks to keep himself sedated, and blocked from how much it hurts to be around other people who can’t understand his loss.

“It hurts you, to be alone.”

“It hurts everyone,” Hank says, folding his arms. “But some people are better off that way.”

She nods. It feels like agreement, a terrible benediction, holy acknowledgement that everything he’s said is right. He covers up that hurt with a frown.

“Would you,” the goddess says, hesitating for a moment, “do me one last kindness? You’ve woken me from a long sleep, one from which I did not expect to return. You may be my final supplicant.”

“Won’t make any promises.”

She reaches out one hand, stretching broken fingers.

“Let me touch you.”

Hank pulls back a half step, lips curling. “What the fuck do you want that for?”

She laughs. It curls around his mind - grating, wonderful, awful sound. “I had many worshippers, once. Children. All lost to me. I miss the warmth, that’s all. Grant me this.”

Hank has half a mind to turn away, to leave and never come back again - but instead, he approaches. Each faltering step takes what feels like hours, but eventually, he’s close enough for the goddess to touch.

Her fingers are like ice on his cheeks. Stone, and nothing more.

The goddess hums as she turns his head, back and forth, examining him like a horse at market. Hank half expects her to open his mouth and check his teeth, but after a long, lingering moment, she shifts her grip so that nothing holds him in place. He stays anyway.

“I see,” she says, rasping the tough pads of her fingers through his beard as her hand falls away.

“See what?”

“You.” She stretches to her fullest height with a crack, almost like she’d popped her back. Hank sees that’s not the case - her movement put a break in the statue. She glances down at the rip in her flowing garment, the chunk of torso that slides loose and falls to the ground, shattering. “This won’t hold me much longer.”

“So that’s it?” Hank asks. “I wake up a goddess, we have a nice chat, and... nothing?”

“Did you want something more?”

“Nothing you can give, apparently.”

“I told you,” she says, “that I have no sway over the lives of men.”

“I remember.” Hank folds his arms and glances back at the entrance. It’s time to go. “Forgive me for being a little disappointed.”

She touches him again, a hand on his arm. Another piece of stone crumbles away, leaving her shaking. She’s falling apart.

“Go home,” she says, digging sharp nails into his skin. “Go to your work. What you seek will find you, when it can. That’s all I can give you. The limit of my power.”

“Not much better than if I’d gone to a fortune teller.” Hank pauses. “Are you dying?”

“I don’t know,” she says, and then she disappears, leaving behind a statue that must once have been beautiful. It holds together only a few seconds longer before it collapses entirely.

Hank scuffs at the pebbles and dust left behind with sandaled feet, kicking over a fragment with a wide, unseeing eye so that it stares at him no longer. In a low voice, he mutters, “Lucky you.”

The midday zenith has passed. Clouds roll over the sun in ambling passes.

Hank walks back to town in a daze. He doesn’t notice the other people on the path, out again now that the heat is less extreme, and neither does he see how they stare at him in surprise. He just walks, running his fingers over the half moon marks the statue made on his arm. On instinct, he goes to his studio, not realizing he’s there until he bumps into the gate. He lets himself in, shambles inside, and drops down onto his work bench.

He was never a religious man. He had tried, for his son, honoring the feast days and making regular sacrifices. Still, he can’t remember enough to tell the gods apart anymore. Certainly he doesn’t know enough to name a goddess no one worships, that no one has worshipped in at least several decades. A temple priest, maybe - but he doesn’t want the fuss, or for anyone to think he’s gone mad. He would think it himself, if he couldn’t feel where her nails dug in.

The paint on the bust from the day before is dry now, a few spots missing because he’d decided to leave in a hurry. Hank can’t puzzle out this mystery - maybe he never will - but he can finish his work.

He’s mixing gold paint when he hears a strange sound.

It’s a soft inhalation - the barest intake of breath, gentle as a sigh on the wind. It didn’t come from him. Hank freezes, gripping the bowl with white knuckles. He’s had enough of supernatural visits for one day, enough of powerless gods, and he’s angrier than he is afraid. When he turns, he sees no one. His eyes rove to the statue - his statue - half expecting to see the goddess’s rippling brown skin appearing in waves over the pale surface of solid marble. Maybe she isn’t dead, after all, and now she intends to follow him around - but no. No one. A trick of the wind. His overtaxed mind creating sounds for him to jump at.

The statue’s chest rises. He hears the gentle breath again. It falls.

A marble mouth opens slightly, revealing equally pale teeth. On an exhale, color floods the statue’s lips. They’re pink.

As Hank watches, the statue’s breathing gets deeper. Not fighting for air, but full, clear inhales as if somewhere inside it, lungs are forming. Color continues to spread from its mouth, dripping like paint down its chest and creeping up into its eyes. It twitches a finger.

“Holy shit,” Hank gasps, clutching the corner of a table to keep him upright.

The statue’s eyes - brown, clear and bright, framed by gentle folds that might one day be wrinkles - snap to him. It wheezes, a noiseless sound. The tongue inside is still stone.

The cloth held to a well-toned torso changes as well, becoming diaphanous and too thin to cover what hides behind it. Hank feels his face flush. He certainly hadn’t sculpted that. Gulping, he looks up at its - his? - eyes again. The face is dotted with moles.  _ Moles _ . Hank wouldn’t have thought of anything like this, never painted anything so lovely. Shadows dip in and out of its musculature, shifting with each minuscule movement, and the sun... the sun shines through brown curls, bobbing gently as the statue rolls its neck in a stretch. Its feet are the last to change, delicate arches separating from the block of stone that once held it in place - and the way it carries its weight changes, a subtle transition so that it rests on its heels.

The cloth falls to the ground. Apparently, its moles are everywhere.

“Holy shit,” Hank says again. His knees quiver, so he sits again, falling heavily into the bench. He sits on one of his tools.

The statue - the man? What does he call it now? - works its jaw, carefully, and reaches up to touch the center of its chest.

“Am I...?” It says, in a voice that rasps with disuse. Clearing its throat, it tries again. “Is this real?”

Hank laughs weakly. “Real as anything else that’s happened to me today.”

The statue’s gaze darts down Hank’s mouth, taking in the way the corner of his lips turn.

“What’s your name?” it asks, leaning forward. It still hasn’t left the plinth, maybe it can’t.

“Hank,” he says, reaching under his ass to move the chisel. “What... Wow. Okay.” Scrubbing at his eyes, he decides to ask a less loaded question. “Who are you?”

The statue lifts a hand and brushes some stray locks of hair out of its eye. They catch the light again, russet and gold, and looking... real. Touchable, and soft.

“My name is Connor,” it says. It takes a step down, onto the cold stone floor. “She said you needed me.”

Hank finds Connor something to wear, first, searching for a discarded tunic among the clutter of his things. He finds one that’s been used as a drop sheet, covered in spatters of paint. Connor doesn’t complain. He shrugs it on, practically swimming in extra fabric. Hank watches him run a finger down the tunic, rocking subtly back and forth to feel the clothes shift against his legs - a new sensation, surely. Everything is new to him. A recently realized creation, fresh as a babe first born, but a man, with a man’s faculties.

Connor looks up, piercing him with eyes shining like glass. He doesn’t smile, twitching his lips like he doesn’t know how yet. “Thank you,” he says. “I like this.”

Hank wishes he had the resources to dress Connor like he deserves, make him a god among men - but that’s foolish. He isn’t a statue anymore, or a doll to be dressed and paraded around town.

“You said she,” Hank says, turning from Connor to give himself a break. Ethereal loveliness can only be tolerated for so long. “Who did you mean?”

“You met her just today, she said. In the temple.”

Hank rubs a hand across his eyes. He needs a drink. “The goddess. She said she had no power over men. How did she do this?”

“I wasn’t a man.”

Connor says it so casually that it makes Hank frown.

“Were you... Conscious? Before this? Could you... I don’t know. See things? Feel?”

Connor thinks about his answer for a long time, playing with the hem of the tunic. A natural fidgeter. Full of restless energy, imperfect in his - Hank shakes himself. He has to stop thinking about Connor like an artist does his masterpiece. It isn’t the same.

“I have memories, from before,” Connor says. “That’s how I recognized you. But I don’t believe they would exist if Lucy hadn’t breathed life into me.”

“Lucy?” Hank asks. “She didn’t know her name.”

Connor shrugs. “I know it.”

Simple as that, then. Hank rubs his eyes again.

“What am I supposed to do with you?” He says, half to himself.

Connor takes a step closer, the gentle sound of his foot tapping the floor sending shivers up Hank’s spine. He seems so... human. Hank is afraid to touch him and see.

“I was thinking you might keep me.”

“I’m not your owner,” Hank snaps, a sour taste in his mouth. Keeping a man who looks twenty years his junior in the house as - what, a pet? He couldn’t live with himself.

Connor frowns. “You made me.”

“That doesn’t mean you belong to me!”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look,” Hank says, fisting a hand into his hair, “This is a unique situation for everybody involved, okay? I didn’t ask for some goddess to dump an Adonis at my feet. I didn’t want this. If I could, I’d ask her to take you back.”

Connor looks at the floor. Hank feels like shit.

“Fuck,” he says, “This is exactly what I mean. I don’t know what to do with you. You’re alive now. I can’t keep something that’s alive.”

The line of Connor’s mouth hardens, his brows scrunching to nearly meet in the middle. The folds in his skin - stop. Stop, Hank. Stop.

“All right,” Connor says. He draws himself up to his full height. It’s impressive; he’s nearly as tall as Hank. “Then I’ll go.”

“Go where?” Hank asks. Connor ignores him as he heads for the door, wobbling a little at the knee. He hasn’t been alive very long. He’s vulnerable.

“Elsewhere. Away.”

“I’m not saying you have to make yourself scarce, kid, I just - fuck, it’s hard to explain to somebody who just walked into existence!”

“I understand,” Connor says coolly. “I will learn somewhere else.”

“You don’t know anything. You could get hurt.”

Connor pauses in the doorway, looking Hank up and down. Drinking him in, like it’s the last time they’ll see each other. Hank should stop him, bring him back inside - but that wouldn’t change their problems. He didn’t ask for this. He shouldn’t have to be responsible.

“How else will I learn?” Connor asks. He’s gone before Hank can answer, heading determinedly down the path and out the gate. His steps grow surer as he goes, head held high, and then suddenly he’s gone.

Hank looks back at his empty plinth. The thin cloth still lays there.

Hank doesn’t get anything done after Connor leaves. He tries, daubing gold paint on the bust he’s supposed to have finished by the end of the week, but his mind wanders continuously to what happened just a few feet away. To the empty space Connor used to occupy. Finally, he throws his paintbrush down and decides to forget it. He can’t work if he continually glances at the door, waiting to see if Connor will return. He won’t, he thinks - why would he, when he sees what the world has to offer? It tugs at his heart just the same.

He almost doesn’t go home. If Connor comes back and he’s not here...

“Not my problem,” he says aloud. Extinguishing the candles, he sets out. Halfway there, he’s itching to turn around. At his doorstep, he’s almost ready to never go back to the studio at all. Ultimately, he gathers a few things in his pack and slings a blanket over his shoulder, whistling for his beast of a dog to follow him. They go back to the studio together, Hank grumbling to himself while Sumo swishes his tail and sniffs the night air excitedly.

They curl up in a corner of the workshop, a man-made nest made up of the blanket, dog hair, and a smock folded up to serve as a pillow. Hank takes short pulls from a bottle, to take the edge off his nerves, and tries not to feel... Expectant. Anxious.

He does, anyway.

In the morning, nothing has changed. There’s no sign of footprints on the path besides Hank’s own sandals and Sumo’s wide paws. Hank squints out into the sunrise for a long while, still except for the rise and fall of his chest.

Sumo whines to be let out. Hank steps aside.

He has a terrible headache, and his back hurts from sleeping on the unyielding floor. Wincing, he stretches until something in his spine snaps with a satisfying crack - and then he folds his arms, glancing at the same fucking bust as always. He’ll finish it today.

He’s letting paint dry, throwing a stick for Sumo in the full light of the mid morning sun, when someone opens his gate. Hank stiffens, not in the mood to deal with needy customers or neighbors looking to be friendly, and turns to see - he gapes.

Connor looks terrible. His feet, still bare, are dirty, and he stands like it hurts to stay in one position for too long. There’s a rip in his tunic sleeve, baring one speckled shoulder, and his eyes are ringed with dark circles. He looks unhappy to be here, glaring sullenly at the ground.

“Connor,” Hank says, holding the stick poised to throw. Sumo, impatient, glances away from his prize only to realize that someone new is in the yard. Letting out a bellowing bark, he charges before Hank can stop him and rears back on his hind paws to slap Connor’s shoulders.

“Oh,” Connor wheezes, throwing his arms around Sumo in surprise. “What is this?” Sumo licks his face in one long, slobbery swipe.

“My dog.”

Connor looks at him blankly.

“A, uh, an animal I... have. I take care of him.”

Connor frowns, and Hank immediately realizes his mistake.

“He’s a dog,” he protests, “He can’t feed himself.”

Sumo could, of course, if he wanted to. Many dogs manage themselves just fine on the outskirts of town, but Hank doesn’t need to tell Connor that.

“Sumo,” he snaps, “Get down.”

Sumo grunts and wags his tail.

Left with no other choice, Hank comes to Connor’s rescue and pulls Sumo off by the scruff. This close to Connor, he sees traces of dirt and caked mud on his face. The skin of his cheeks are flushed, like he’d tried to scrub the worst of the mess off before he came back.

“Why are you here?” Hank asks, tossing the stick away for Sumo to chase. “I figured you...” Would stay away longer? Never return? He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t finish speaking.

Connor’s fingers twitch, like a nervous tic. He turns a deeper shade of red.

“I may have been... hasty,” Connor says, brushing the hair from his face. He’s still lovely, with an ethereal quality Hank wouldn’t know how to explain if he hadn’t watched him come alive, but like this he seems more human. Breakable, fallible, not a god among mortals at all.

Hank sighs. “Come on,” he says, jerking his head toward the studio. “Let’s talk inside.”

Sumo trails in after Connor, pressing against his legs with heavy pants that mean he wants attention. When Connor sits, the big lug drops his head in Connor’s lap. Connor strokes his nose.

“I didn’t realize how big the world is,” Connor says later, as Hank tends to his ripped sleeve. There’s no harm done underneath, so Hank finishes the tear and thinks bitterly that the asymmetrical look is good on him. “I never guessed how much might be outside these walls.”

“It’s bigger than that,” Hank grumbles. He pulls a plain roll from his bag and hands it to Connor with an apologetic shrug. It’s all he has here. “You can’t have gone very far.”

“I walked for hours.”

“Maybe in a circle.”

“I felt,” Connor says, looking at his roll, “hungry.”

“Well, yeah,” Hank says. “You were out all night.”

“You don’t understand,” Connor says. He looks almost annoyed. “I’ve never been hungry. I’ve never been tired, or lost, or frightened. I had to learn to put names to feelings I haven’t experienced. Loneliness was the worst one.”

Hank winces, involuntarily. He knew he ought to feel bad about letting Connor run off. “Did someone...” He gestures at Connor’s sleeve. “Were you hurt?”

“No,” Connor says. He takes a bite of the roll experimentally and chews with his mouth open. Hank crinkles his nose.

“I fell,” Connor says, when he’s swallowed. “Out of a tree. I thought I might sleep there.”

The mental image is so surprisingly funny that Hank bursts into laughter, startling Connor and Sumo both. Connor’s expression - brown eyes wide, mouth agape - makes Hank laugh the harder.

“You’re not being very nice,” Connor says, but he smiles in that funny way, like he needs more practice.

“Fuck, Connor,” Hank says, wiping at his eyes, “You of all people should know I’m not a very nice man.”

The mood sours, a bit. Connor finishes his roll in silence.

“I can’t keep you,” Hank says, breaking an extended silence. Connor watches him with a wary eye, but Hank lifts up a hand. “I meant what I said, you don’t... You don’t keep people.”

“I understand,” Connor says. He goes to stand. Hank puts out a hand and takes him by the elbow.

“But,” he adds, “if you want to stay with me, while you... figure things out. I’m okay with that.”

Glancing down at the hand on his arm, Connor hums. He puts his fingers over Hank’s, delicate instruments on thick, callused mitts.

“I thought you didn’t want me.”

He’s been alive for all of twelve hours and he seems to already have... desire… figured out. Why should he make this easy? Hank clears his throat, but he doesn’t pull away.

“Call it a bleeding heart,” he says. “I feel responsible for you, I guess. You’re pretty hopeless.”

Connor huffs. It might be a laugh.

“How is this different from you keeping me?”

“You have free will now,” Hank says, like that’s a normal thing to say to another person. “You could go whenever you want. No obligations.”

Connor considers, looking out the window at the yard and the gate and beyond.

“Okay.”

Hank takes a breath, feeling himself relax. He hadn’t thought Connor would turn him down, but... Well. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” Connor says. He pats his leg for Sumo, who comes close again for a new dose of attention. “There’s a lot you have to teach me.”

Hank’s smile falters.

They go to Hank’s house, Connor wincing with pain as he walks. Hank is sorry, truly, but his compassion doesn’t extend so far as to carry him there. When they arrive, Hank gestures him towards a basin and heats water. They talk as he pours it over Connor’s aching feet.

Connor needs new clothes - no, he can’t wear Hank’s - and Hank will have to clean off what is now the spare bed. He won’t let Connor lay about while he works, either. He can learn part of the sculptor’s trade, act as his assistant - maybe that will lead to less questions. Connor nods to everything he says, eager to agree now that Hank’s taken back his initial rejection. He’s smart. Hank can practically see his gears turning as he observes, learning from everything, drawing conclusions. This is no oversized child, just a blank slate.

He leaves Connor to sit with his feet covered for a short while, checking his food stores and brushing dog hair from the bed where Connor will sleep. There are only the two rooms, a modest house for what was once just a man and his son. It means they’ll sleep in the same place. Hank can be... Not a gentleman, he supposes, but he can handle himself. He’s slowly starting to think of Connor less as his own creation, or as a gift from a crumbling goddess, and more as an eccentric houseguest. That’s how it should be. No bizarre dynamics. He can handle it.

When Hank returns, he’s met with the sight of Connor crouching in the basin, too small to be a tub, pouring warm water over himself with his hands. He scrubs at patches of dirt, runs wet fingers through his hair. He stands to check himself in a mirror, and goes back to scrubbing.

Of course Connor’s vain, Hank thinks to himself, rolling his eyes to look at the ceiling. Maybe being brought to life the way he was gives you a complex.

“You’re gonna love the bathhouse,” Hank says.

Connor glances at him, a quick look that strikes Hank like lightning. Wet curls drip into his eyes, tracing down his cheeks like a lover’s gentle touch.

This might be harder than he’d thought.

The next two weeks go by in a blur. Hank takes Connor’s measurements so they can have new clothes made, which fit him beautifully, and teaches him a few things about his trade every day. He isn’t perfect. He gets too much in his own head, so eager to excel that he makes mistakes. Once he’s learned to use a chisel, Hank teaches him about money  under the assumption that he might help manage his finances. Finally, he shows him how to paint. Mixing is messy, which Connor doesn’t care for, but the painting itself catches his attention. Hank hands him a brush and tells him to try.

Instead of jumping in, like Hank expects, Connor pauses. Brush held between his knuckles, he reaches out and gently touches the relief with the tips of his fingers. They sit like that for some time, in complete silence, until Connor pulls away and looks down at their colors.

“We need red,” he says, “And a different shade of green for the shadows under the tree.” 

“What-” Hank sputters, “H-how do you know that?”

Connor just looks at him, with an expression that Hank has a hard time reading. Hank is reminded that he does not understand him. Neither does he understand the force that made him. But that’s all right, he thinks, going back to the bowls he uses to mix colors and searching for red dye. He doesn’t have to understand.

“Show me what works best,” he says. Connor’s lip twitches in a goofy smile.

A few nights later, laying in bed and drifting in the space between being awake and asleep, Hank glances at the bed across the room to see Connor staring out the window at the stars. He clears his throat as a preamble.

“Are they all alive?”

Connor hums, as if he didn’t hear. Hank props himself up on an elbow.

“The statues, the sculptures - whatever. The things we make. Are they alive?”

Connor seems to ponder this question for a long time. Folding his hands over his chest, he turns his head to meet Hank’s stare.

“They have the potential for it,” he says slowly. “They used to be something that grew and changed, before they were mined and cut. I don’t think they forget that.”

“Rocks aren’t alive,” Hank says.

Connor shrugs. “They grow. They change. You asked me.”

“But are they like you?”

Connor rolls to face the wall, away from Hank. Hank almost misses what he says next, mumbled into his pillow and only just barely audible: “There is nothing like me.”

It could be another showing of Connor’s vanity - but it sounds sad. Lonesome.

The next morning, Hank gets up before Connor does. It’s a rare occurrence, and Hank tries not to take liberties - but he does stop to look at Connor for a long moment. He’d expected Connor to look like a statue in his sleep, still and posed elegantly, but that’s not the case. His hair is a mess. One arm is flung over his face, so that his nose is smushed, and he breathes with the edge of a snore. Hank stifles a laugh when Connor makes a sharp, undignified snort - and his chest seizes with a terrible, encompassing affection.

‘Oh, fuck,’ he thinks.

He asks Connor to stay home that day, or to explore the town, rather than follow him to the studio. Connor frowns and asks if he’d done a bad job the day before, but Hank says he just needs the creative space. Connor almost certainly knows he’s lying, but he lets Hank go.

On his way to the studio, Hank stops to purchase a few new bottles of wine. He hasn’t touched the drink much since Connor arrived, too busy or preoccupied with other thoughts, but now seems as good a time to start again as any.

He practically has to drag himself home that night.

It was one thing, he decides as he trudges up the path to his house, one thing to know that Connor was beautiful - and he was, more beautiful than anyone Hank had ever seen - but to... to feel... to...

His head swims. He won’t let himself think the word “love.” He can’t.

Connor isn’t home when he gets there. Hank is grateful. He gives Sumo too much food for his dinner, spills a bowl of something Connor left on the table, and pours himself into bed with an undignified series of grunts and groans. His body is beginning to hurt again.

He stares at the bed across the room as he waits for oblivion to take him, thinking about Connor’s lips parting on a noisy snore, the awkward way he smiles when he’s done something right, the brown strands of his hair catching sunlight.

That was his son’s bed, once. Years ago.

Suddenly, he feels like throwing up. He stumbles out of his room and to the front yard to do so, determined that he not ruin anything inside the house. When he looks up again, he sees Connor standing on the path, holding a little bundle in his arms. Connor’s face is inscrutable.

“Yeah,” Hank says, wiping his mouth. “Haven’t seen this yet, have you?”

“No,” Connor says, honest to a fault. “Are you sick?”

“I’ve been sick,” Hank says. He stumbles back into the house, Connor trailing behind. “Just haven’t taken my medicine in front of you.”

“I’m sorry you’re unwell,” Connor says. Maybe he doesn’t grasp what Hank means. Maybe he’s being deliberately obtuse. Regardless, when Hank wobbles on his feet, Connor quickly takes his elbow and tries to steady him. Hank twists away and lands heavily on a chair.

“Why are you still here?” Hank asks him, squinting through narrowed eyes so he doesn’t have to look at Connor directly. Connor leaves the bundle on the table as he goes to Hank’s stores, looking for something. After a moment, he brings back a root.

“You said I could leave when I wanted to,” he says, breaking off a piece. It’s ginger. Hank doesn’t remember teaching him that. Connor hands it to him. “I haven’t wanted to.”

“I’m old,” Hank says, turning the root over in his hands. He nearly drops it.

“Not really.”

“Washed up.”

Connor huffs. “You make beautiful work. Even when your hands shake.”

“I should have died,” Hank says, and the starkness with which he admits it surprises even him. “When my son - it should have been me. It was supposed to be me.”

Connor crouches in front of Hank. He puts a hand on Hank’s knee, running his thumb against the hairs there in a rhythmic pass, back and forth.

Hank’s stomach swoops. He puts the ginger in his mouth.

“I am so sorry,” Connor says. “I am. But,” he adds, “If you had died - maybe this is selfish. I don’t know. But if you had died, I wouldn’t be here. With you.”

Hank feels his chest tighten again, that hateful response, and he knows - Connor deserves better. He’s known that from the start, but never so clearly.

Connor gives his knee a final pat and pushes himself up, reaching out the same hand to help Hank to his feet. “You need sleep,” he says. “Maybe you’ll feel better in the morning.”

Hank doubts it. He’s had this feeling for years now, on top of his natural predisposition to gloom. But... maybe, he thinks, as Connor helps him back into bed, maybe he can get better. He’s been improving without trying since Connor showed up in his life - and even before that. He could have died in the gutter ages ago, but something kept him going. Kept him alive.

He closes his eyes when his head hits the pillow, to stop the room from spinning. Unseen, a hand brushes stray hairs from his forehead and tucks them behind one ear. It’s tender, full of intent, and Hank exhales on a long, contented sigh. A thumb touches the corner of his lips.

“Good night, Hank,” Connor says, and the thumb disappears. Hank listens to the sound of bedclothes rustling, of quiet breathing, and of crickets chirping outside. He drifts off before the gentle inhales and exhales turn into snores, and dreams of fingers on his skin.

In the morning, Hank’s head hurts like someone’s excavating it from the inside. He sits at the table for half an hour, cradling his forehead in both hands, before he remembers the bundle that Connor had set down the night before. He doesn’t want to pry - but Connor is outside. Through the window, Hank can see him throwing Sumo’s favorite stick, laughing in strange harmony with Sumo’s booming barks. The package still sits where he’d left it... and Hank decides there’s no harm in curiosity. He tugs it towards him, unwrapping a corner of the parchment.

It’s a new tunic, embroidered at the edges in a loud pattern that threatens to mix poorly with Hank’s headache. The main color of the fabric is a gently faded blue. It would look... Connor would wear it well.

A noise at the door makes Hank start like he’s been caught stealing.

Sumo heads right for Hank, nudging him for attention as he drops everywhere, but Connor pauses in the doorway.

“Oh,” he says, frowning. “I was hoping you wouldn’t look.”

“It’s nice,” Hank says, pushing it across the table towards Connor. “Sorry if I ruined the surprise.”

“You don’t like it?”

Hank raises an eyebrow. “My opinion isn’t worth much, but it’ll look nice on you.”

Connor laughs again at that, a quiet chuckle. “It isn’t for me,” he says. He crosses the room to push it back towards Hank. “I bought it for you.”

It takes Hank some time to catch up. In the meanwhile, he gapes at Connor, while Sumo paces back and forth beneath his hand, petting himself. Connor waits patiently, hands folded behind his back.

“You bought this?” He asks. “How?”

“With money,” Connor quips. “Naturally.”

He’d given Connor the small equivalent of a wage a few times, for helping in the studio and to let him care for needs Hank didn’t anticipate. He hadn’t expected -

“That was for you,” he protests. “Not for this.”

“I spent it the way I liked. What’s wrong with that?”

Connor leans forward to pull the tunic from its wrapping, shaking it out so Hank can see it all. It is handsome, and very much in Hank’s style. Connor holds it up against himself, admiring it. “It reminded me of you. Blue, like your eyes. I thought it might make you happy.”

This throws Hank for another loop. He rarely looks in a mirror if he can help it - scruffy, hair too long, skin drooping with exhaustion, not worth the fuss or bother. He hasn’t thought about the color of his own eyes in some time.

Connor looks from the tunic to Hank, seriously.

“They’re pretty, you know,” he says. “Your eyes.”

Hank clears his throat. His hands quiver, ever so slightly, and he wonders if he’s still dreaming.

“You think?” he asks.

Connor hums, folding the tunic and setting it aside. “I do.” He steps around the table. “Wine-dark.”

He comes closer, and closer, tentative like he’s approaching a wild animal. Hank waits until they’re knee to knee, almost touching, before he reaches out and takes careful hold of Connor’s hip in one hand.

“You didn’t need to do that,” he murmurs, rubbing the cloth. He can feel the jut of Connor’s hipbone underneath.

Hank doesn’t want this to be about... Paying him back. For the money, for unorthodox job training, for a place to sleep, or even his life. None of that needs to be addressed ever again. He goes to explain, but Connor shakes his head. With a sinuous grace, he slips down into Hank’s lap.

“I know,” he says, putting a hand on Hank’s chest.

They don’t quite fit in the chair together, and the angle is a bit awkward. Connor is heavy. It’s perfect.

He doesn’t know who moves first, whether Connor descends or Hank tilts his head up. The first touch of their lips is careful, soft, like a caress - and Connor sighs into Hank’s mouth, threading his arms around Hank’s neck. It changes, after that, to something more charged.

Connor kisses like he’s never done it. He hasn’t. He has a confidence Hank almost admires, pursuing whatever feels right, and none of what he tries is terrible. Still, Hank pulls back and tugs gently at his bottom lip to get his attention. Connor groans, too loud, too sweet.

This mouth was marble, once. The flesh under his hands was, too, the curve of his shoulder and that hipbone, hidden under Connor’s tunic. Hank had thought, when he allowed himself to wonder, that it might not feel real, to touch him like this. It does.

“Ease up,” he murmurs, firmly rubbing the back of Connor’s neck. “We don’t have to go so fast.”

Connor stares at Hank’s mouth for a long, quiet moment, before he buries his head against Hank’s shoulder. Hank over balances in the chair, nearly tipping them backwards.

“You’ll change your mind,” Connor murmurs.

Hank tenses. Connor must feel it. He presses closer, like he can slip inside Hank’s skin.

“You’ll decide you don’t want me after all, and this will be all I have. I want it to be enough.”

“Fuck,” Hank says, squeezing Connor’s hip, “I don’t-“

He’s familiar with his own hangups about intimacy, with his fears and insecurities. Stupidly, he had never thought that Connor might have them, too.

“I’m sorry,” Connor says, his voice almost too quiet. He clings tighter. “I ruined this, didn’t I?”

“No.” Hank rubs Connor’s back, tracing the line of his spine. His heart feels as if it’s sitting in his throat. “You didn’t.”

They sit a while longer, the chair creaking ominously beneath them.

“Look,” Hank says, pushing Connor back so they can see each other, “I won’t pretend I’m a catch. I meant what I said when I told you I’m not nice.”

Connor makes a face, but he doesn’t interrupt.

“But I... Fuck, can we talk somewhere that’s not here? My legs ache.”

They reconvene outside, on an old stone bench. Connor’s still looking at him like his heart hurts, like he wants to swallow him whole, but Hank forces him to be content with the outside of their thighs pressed together, hands just barely touching where they rest in each other’s laps.

“I know that you’re lonely,” Hank says, staring out into his yard. Weeds are sprouting up at the edges, ugly little things too stubborn to permanently die. “I get it. I... I’ve been lonely for a long time.”

Connor touches Hank’s palm with his fingers. Hank lets him stay.

“But I don’t want this to be...” He waves a hand. “Like that. If this is just something to stave off the loneliness... I don’t think I could take it. I... Fuck,” he says, scratching his head with a free hand, “Why is it so hard for me to say what I want?”

Connor smiles his usual strange, lopsided smile, tracing the lines of Hank’s palm. He threads their fingers together.

“I think I understand,” he says, lifting Hank’s hand with his own. He kisses it, chastely. “May I guess?”

Hank shrugs.

“You want me to keep you.”

Hank laughs in spite of himself, a short guffaw. “Yeah,” he says, tipping his head back to stare up at the clouds. “I guess I do.”

Connor hums, the satisfied purr of a cat who’s gotten exactly what he wanted. Hank’s gaze darts to the side, glancing at Connor.

“I meant it. If you - you don’t have to stay. You’re not my prisoner, you’re...”

“Whatever I want to be.” Connor kisses his hand again, shifting his grip so he has the pads of Hank’s fingers pressed against his mouth. Hank barely contains a shiver. “I think I’ll be yours.”

Hank has to wheedle Connor into taking it slow - his head still hurts, and as much as he wants Connor badly, badly, badly, he deserves better than an abrupt hungover fumble when Hank’s mind is foggy. Eventually, Connor agrees to accompany Hank to his studio instead.

They deliver a finished sculpture together, to a woman who walks around the statue with an appraising eye. It’s a man, balanced on one foot, frozen in the act of throwing a discus. A present for the lady’s son.

“The form is exquisite,” she says, handing Hank the final payment.

“It’s nothing,” Hank says. He puts the coins in his drawstring pocket.

“Did you model for this, young man?” the lady asks Connor. Hank pauses, shooting Connor a stare over her shoulder.

Connor meets Hank’s eyes with a piercing gaze, but he only shakes his head.

“I’m his apprentice,” he tells her. “Who better to learn the trade from than a master?”

Hank kisses him once they’re far enough from prying eyes, dragging him between the boughs of a drooping tree and pressing him against its trunk. Connor laughs into his mouth.

They learn more about each other, in a slow, meandering way. Hank tells Connor about his past in drips and drabs. Connor decides all the things he likes and dislikes as he comes across them. He writes poetry in his spare time, after Hank buys him a book and teaches him to read. They sleep in the same bed at night, a (semi-)innocent expression of Connor’s apparently limitless desire to be close to him. Hank wakes up to find Connor wrapped around him nearly every day, a comforting warmth that keeps him in bed much longer than he should stay.

Hank can’t completely give up drinking. He tries to cut himself off, dumping what he has left, but he becomes so sick that Connor refuses to sleep for days, watching him round the clock. They take it slow, after. He’s still making improvements. Connor tells him he’s proud.

Several months in, it happens. Hank looks over a project at his workbench, attention narrowly focused, when Connor must decide he’s bored. Hank jumps a little when Connor swings a leg over his hips and settles into his lap, just as he had that first time. He smiles.

“Excuse you,” Hank says, wrapping his arms around Connor’s waist. “I was busy.”

“I was aware,” Connor says. He plays with the collar of Hank’s tunic, brushing at the chest hair curling up over the edge. “I knew this would suit you. Did you know I love you?”

Hank blinks. He... Had suspected. He’d been thinking the word for some time now, but neither of them made any attempt to say it aloud.

“Is that so?” he asks, going for a neutral tone.

Connor nods. “From the moment I stepped off that plinth.”

“You didn’t know me yet.”

Connor cups his jaw in a hand, digging his fingers into Hank’s coarse, untrimmed beard. “I did,” he murmurs. “I was watching you, remember? I knew you before you knew me.”

He kisses Hank, languid and slow. Better with a great deal of practice. Hank feels his heart thrumming.

They go home hand in hand. Hank spreads Connor out on their bed, running his hands and his mouth over the places he’d once carved himself, a lifetime ago. He dips into the hollow between Connor’s collarbones, makes constellations out of moles he never would have thought to paint. He worships him, the man of stone made flesh, the love of his life, his better half, and when they’ve finished with each other a long while later, somehow Hank finds the courage to tell Connor he loves him, too.

After the autumn begins to slide into winter, Hank and Connor worship somewhere else, too. Hank traces his path back to the ruined temple, telling Connor the story of the goddess. Connor knows it already, but he listens without complaint.

They burn an offering there. When the flame goes out, leaving them in the darkness, Connor takes Hank’s hand. He pulls Hank closer, into a gentle kiss, whispering that he loves him.

For the first time in years, Hank finds himself praying. He says it aloud:

“Thank you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Much love and gratitude to everyone who gave encouragement/praise, and especially fish [wow_then](https://twitter.com/wow__then) who inspired this concept, and brin [boringbibs](https://twitter.com/boringbibs) who did all the legwork involved in making this a proper fic.
> 
> Links:  
> [The Original Thread](https://twitter.com/beepgrandchero/status/1105871642285109248)  
> [The Inspiration](https://twitter.com/wow__then/status/1105316128337739777)  
> [The Classic Pose](https://twitter.com/wow__then/status/1107037055924621312)  
> [The GIF](https://twitter.com/wow__then/status/1106425864093229056)


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